Mediation of Ecstatic Energy… Does exactly what it says on the, er, title

Review: Dustin Wong – Mediation of Ecstatic Energy

Published on September 20th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams

Erstwhile Ponytail and Ecstatic Sunshine chap Dustin Wong has pulled an absolute blinder with Mediation of Ecstatic Energy, which makes a huge virtue out of its near-uniformity by sounding quite unlike anything else around.

It’s a blissful sensory overload from start to finish, a fantastical and relentless heavy rainfall of benevolent pink droplets interspersed with fuzzily melodic guitar and amiably swaggering beats, occasionally so laid-back as to be gloriously at odds with the deluge going on around it.

We barely even have to namecheck tracks since our enthused witterings could almost apply across the board. Mediation of Ecstatic Energy is somehow gorgeously disorientating, like sped-up birdsong of the most melodious kind, feeling elemental to life on Earth, a significant new scientific discovery that will change the way we perceive everything.

These plinky pink droplets are alive, you know. They can assume different formations, like when they fall into the shape of horses racing each other on “Speeding Feathers Staring”, or take off and fly away from a cocoon of a Motorik rhythm on opening track “The Big She”.

As Mediation of Ecstatic Energy progresses further, so does its variety; “Japan” gets quite maudlin, while “Physical Consciousness Went In” ramps up the psychedelia with an inquisitive splendour of a progression. Oh and, though we’re not quite sure why, “(A) shows (B) his analysis and (C) looked over” has to be one of the song titles of the year.

“Helix Sky” hits a swirling, dizzying apex then falls out into “Vision Waterfall”, which both sounds/feels like its title and could even have provided the album with its name, were Mediation of Ecstatic Energy not so perfect a summation of itself already.